"Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed" wrote Eric Fromm. As with poetry, he says, listening is interpreting or fathoming. Understanding (notwithstanding) another is appreciation, and letting be, of what eludes understanding, the "strangeness" the other. "Loves knowledge," as Martha Nussbaum says. The risk of loving certain sayings is they begin to love you back. And make demands upon the dormant auditor, so the poem or gospel can live again, like a seed, regardless of the husk.
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